


study room

by weegee1204



Series: Sanders Sides Unpopular Ships Challenge [7]
Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Declarations Of Love, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-07
Updated: 2021-02-07
Packaged: 2021-03-12 07:54:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,454
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29257041
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/weegee1204/pseuds/weegee1204
Summary: Logan calls his roommates to a meeting.
Relationships: Anxiety | Virgil Sanders/Deceit | Janus Sanders/Logic | Logan Sanders
Series: Sanders Sides Unpopular Ships Challenge [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2136858
Comments: 10
Kudos: 46





	study room

**Author's Note:**

> Part of the [Sanders Sides Unpopular Ships Challenge!](https://emy-loves-you.tumblr.com/post/639397525381611520/sanders-sides-unpopular-ships-challenge)
> 
> also,,, this one is decidedly not drabble length LMAOOO but i got carried away and it was so fun :3c

Virgil shifted from one leg to another as he checked his phone for the third time in as many minutes. Janus was _supposed_ to meet him here, but even in the five— six? Yeah, almost six— six years that they’d been roommates, he’d never gotten better at being places on time. Most of the time it was an intentional power move to assert dominance, but Virgil had told him once that he didn’t like it. Janus had never been intentionally late to meet him again.

On cue, the door swung open and Janus strode through, almost colliding with Virgil in the process. He stumbled clumsily, and on instinct Virgil caught him in his steadying grasp.

The two locked eyes, and after a moment Janus smirked.

“Hello, stranger.”

Virgil clicked his tongue in faux annoyance, but he couldn’t hide the earnestness behind his smile as the two of them righted themselves.

“Hey,” he replied. “Any idea what this is all about?”

“I assume he wants to practice his presentation again,” Janus commented idly, the two of them heading towards the private study room Logan had texted them to meet at. 

“At the library, though? We never come here anymore.” That was true— while this library had been a hotspot for the three friends when they were undergrads, none of them had been in quite some time. Even Logan, who’d worked there from the time he was a teenager, hadn’t visited in years— it was much more convenient to do his research, studying, and grad work in the shared home office in the house they lived in together.

“Maybe he wants to use some of the projection equipment to rehearse or something,” Janus answered Virgil’s question. Virgil shook his head.

“I don’t even know why he gets so worried.”

Janus scoffed. “Glass houses.”

“I mean about _presentations,_ Jan,” Virgil retorted. “Or like, school in general. He’s always incredible at...”

His voice trailed off; he’d been planning on ending that sentence with ‘school work’ or ‘graduate school’ or even ‘public speaking about niche ecological topics’, but he found he couldn’t find one in time. The words hung in the air.

A beat, and then Janus sighed with a smile in his voice. “Don’t I know it.”

The two looked at each other. The tips of their tongues were weighed down with words unsaid, and all too soon they reached the small study room Logan requested.

Janus was the first to break eye contact, rapping twice on the door before pushing it open.

“Knock knock!” he announced as he and Virgil entered. Just as expected, there was Logan at the back of the room, fiddling with the wall projector and a set of note cards. He looked up as the two entered, his face a bizarre combination of flushed and pale.

“Hello,” he said quickly before Virgil could ask if he was okay. “Please, take a seat.”

He gestured to the only two rolling chairs in the room. Virgil and Janus paused, side eyeing each other bemusedly, before taking a seat on the other side of the table.

“I do hope this was worth the bus fare,” Janus said lightly. His comment seemed to hit Logan, who flinched minutely before smoothing his face into a neutral expression.

“I wanted to speak with the two of you about something,” Logan continued, voice uncharacteristically tight, “and I thought it best to bring it up in a neutral, public environment should either of you want to leave.”

That… was not what either man expected. Janus kept his eyes trained on Logan’s face; next to him, Virgil subconsciously began bouncing his leg.

“Um,” he said. “Okay?”

Logan nodded. “Right.” He nodded again. “Well.”

Then he blinked, and leaning forward slightly, he murmured, “I need one of you to ask me why I invited you here.”

The tension broke a little, and Virgil huffed a quiet laugh that made Logan’s stance soften.

“Why did you invite us here, Logan?” Janus asked obligingly. Logan shook his head a bit and took a deep breath before looking down at his notecards.

“I invited you both here because this library has a lot of significance to me,” he read, eyes glued to the paper. “This is where I spent the majority of my undergraduate years, studying and working and passing the time with no real connections to the world around me. And… and this is where I first met the two of you.”

He looked up briefly, steeling himself, before turning his body toward Janus as he continued to read. “Janus, you were in the computer lab, swearing at a printer for taking too long to print your midterm.”

The man in question smirked at the memory. “I had a class in 15 minutes. Those things smell fear, you know.”

Logan turned his body toward Virgil, although his eyes remained trained on his note card. “And Virgil, you knocked over a book display I’d put up and pretended to only know French when I came up to help you.”

“I panicked!” Virgil squeaked in defense.

“And both of you came back the next week to work on a class project together,” Logan said with a significant air in his voice. His eyes flicked up again; unbeknownst to each other, both Virgil and Janus gave him matching encouraging smiles.

Logan felt the tension drain slightly from his body, and he couldn’t help but smile back as he continued, “For no reason at all, you two wandered back into this library— and back into my life— time and time again. We were strangers, then acquaintances, classmates, roommates. Friends.”

He paused, then, quieter: “Best friends.”

The silence only lasted a moment, but it was thick, heavy with meaning and intention. Neither Janus nor Virgil could even find it in themselves to make a snarky remark. By now Virgil’s leg had stopped bouncing, and he was watching Logan with an unconscious intensity. Conversely, it was now Janus’ turn to fidget in his seat, the growing sincerity in Logan’s voice making him clench the hem of his jacket between his fingers.

“I…” Logan started, looking between the two of them. He blinked and dropped his eyes back on his notecards.

“I… I am so _grateful_ ,” he said, “and so lucky to call you two my friends. You are the best friends, and the best people, I have ever known. And with this in mind, I was—”

He flipped to a new card, but his hands were shaking: he fumbled, and despite his best efforts the entire stack of notecards all went cascading from his hands to the floor.

“Oh, shit!” Virgil said reflexively, leaning forward in his chair in a feeble attempt to catch them. Janus was already on his feet.

“Allow me,” he said loudly, dropping to his knees to crawl under the table.

Logan’s eyes bulged. “No! No, Janus, wait—”

He, too, dropped to the floor, scrambling to pick up the cards closest to him. Janus knelt across from him, attempting to collect the cards on his side in a much calmer manner.

Above the table, Virgil swore again as he shimmied awkwardly from his seat to join them on the carpeted floor. “Jesus Christ, Lo, how many cards did you— ow! Fuck!”

“Are you okay?” Janus asked, twisting around in the small space to look at him.

“Yeah, fine, fuck, I just hit my head on the table—”

Logan’s face was an amusing mix of highly concerned and completely mortified. “Oh my God, Virgil, I’m sorry, let me help you—”

He shifted forward, but Virgil reared back on instinct, hitting the back of his head against the rolling chair. “Shit!

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

“Wait, wait, who’s on my jacket?” Janus said, yanking fruitlessly at the billowy fabric that was much better suited for walking in the brisk winter weather than crowding under a tiny table. 

“I— I don’t know, I don’t know,” Logan babbled.

“Well, someone’s on my jacket, so get off!”

“Um. Lo?”

Logan looked over Janus’ head, and his stomach flipped as he realized that Virgil had successfully picked up one of the stray cards from the floor, and was _reading_ it.

“Virgil, please,” he pleaded. “Please, just let me explain—” 

“Seriously, whoever it is, move your hand off of my jacket, because I can’t _move_ —”

Virgil lifted his hand, and Janus suddenly flopped forward at the lack of resistance, face planting directly into Logan’s chest.

“Janus!” Logan yelped. “Are you okay?”

The man in question spluttered, shoving himself away from Logan’s chest (and trying his hardest not to flush when he realized he’d placed his hands directly on Logan’s pecs to do so).

“That’s it!” he announced sharply. “ _Time out!_ ”

Everyone stopped moving. Virgil on one side. Logan on the other. Janus stuck between them.

He exhaled, hard. “Okay. Take a deep breath.”

The other two followed his instructions on instinct. None of them counted aloud, but all three of them seemed to follow the same loose pattern of 4 seconds in, 7 seconds holding, and 8 seconds release.

“Okay,” Janus said when they were finished. “Let’s— let’s lie on the floor.”

If the energy weren’t so _fucking_ weird at this moment, Janus would’ve laughed the baffled looks on the others’ faces. Instead he allowed himself to flop to the ground and clumsily roll onto his back. He folded his hands across his stomach and looked up at the others.

“Are you coming?”

Virgil and Logan shared a look. After a few seconds, they joined him. Virgil kicked one of the rolling chairs away to make room for his legs, while Logan tried to push as many of the cards to the side as possible.

Finally they were in place: just three grown men, chilling on the floor of a library study room, staring up at the dirty bottom of the table above them.

“...Reminds me of junior finals week,” Virgil commented idly. Janus snorted, and even Logan managed to give a shaky laugh.

“You spilled coffee on my lab results,” he remembered. “I cried.”

Virgil looked sheepish. “So did I.”

“I didn’t,” Janus reminded them. Logan laughed again, a little louder.

“No. You just emailed my professor on my behalf, told them I had mono, and asked for a week long extension.”

“Well, it worked, didn’t it?”

Virgil giggled loudly, not even bothering to hide the sound. “I forgot about that.”

“I didn’t,” Logan said softly. His words brought the other two into relative silence as well.

Then Virgil passed the note card to Logan. He took it, squinting to read its now slightly smudged writing, before his face went pale again.

“You read it,” he said. It wasn’t a question, but Virgil nodded.

After a few moments, Janus added, “Well, I didn’t, so…” His voice was jokingly impatient, but both Virgil and Logan could recognize the genuine curiosity in his eyes.

Eventually Logan sighed and passed the card to him. Janus held it close to his face to read it in the table’s dim shadow.

“Resources for telling friends and family about… about…”

He squinted for a moment more. “I’m so sorry, does that say ‘parallelogram replenishment’?”

Logan scoffed and reached over to whap his chest. “It says ‘polyamorous relationship’, you bastard, and I know you could read that.”

“Oh, could I now?” Janus replied lightly. He crumpled the note card and tossed it somewhere toward their feet. “Darn these old eyes of mine.”

Virgil snickered softly, then again. Logan sighed and bit his lip. Janus coughed.

And then the three of them burst into laughter— deep, loud, laughter, the kind that they couldn’t stop even if they’d wanted to. Logan rolled on his side as much as he could to face away from the others, Janus covered his face with both of his hands, and Virgil yanked the collar of his shirt over his mouth as if that could silence it.

It was honestly a blessing no one looked into the room; between the notecards all over the floor, the legs sticking out from underneath the table, and the near-screams of laughter seemingly coming from nowhere, it would probably be a surprising scene. Not that they’d care in the slightest.

After some indeterminate amount of time, the laughter tapered off. They weren’t sure exactly when or how it happened, but by the time they were silent again, Logan and Virgil were both lying on their sides facing inward. Janus had both arms out, and the two of them were using his upper arms as pillows.

“Logan,” Janus said softly. Logan looked up at his somber expression.

“Yes?”

Slowly, Janus let his eyes roam from Logan’s eyes to mouth and eyes again. Then he smirked.

“How many note cards were in your stack?”

Logan blinked. His face flushed immediately, especially when he saw Virgil lift his head to smirk at him as well.

“I— I don’t know the exact number.”

“Oh, well, that already means it’s in the high double digits,” Janus confirmed. 

“And the projector, Lo?” Virgil asked with far too much glee in his voice. “Please tell me you had a powerpoint prepared.”

“With APA citations, I should hope.”

“Oh, yeah, of course, you gotta cite your sources, L.”

“And please, _please_ tell me that you prepared a study guide for the readings you assigned us about healthy modern polyamory. Wouldn’t want to fail the quiz you’re inevitably giving us when we get home—”

“ _Enough_ ,” Logan insisted, or maybe begged; it was hard to tell since he’d moved closer to hide his face in Janus’ shoulder. “Please do not mock me now. My heart can’t take anymore stress.”

Janus quirked his head. “What about this was stressful?”

Virgil giggled again, shoving his face into his hand to keep his laughter from building. When he pulled his hand away, there was a moment of hesitation in his eyes before he reached across Janus’ chest to take Logan’s hand. 

Logan looked at Virgil’s fingers intertwined with his like he didn’t quite know what to do with them. Then, looking between Virgil’s eyes to Janus’, he slowly lowered their combined grip until their hands were laying in the middle of Janus’ chest.

Virgil and Janus both flushed, eyes darting towards each other and away again. Logan squeezed Virgil’s fingers, Virgil nuzzled into Janus’ neck, and Janus released a slow, shaky breath that seemed to remove some weight off of his shoulders.

“How long until they kick us out?” he joked weakly.

“I don’t care,” Logan and Virgil said in unison. They blinked, and the three devolved into quiet snickers once more, holding each other close.

For the rest of the afternoon, and the evening, and their lives, they did not let go.

**Author's Note:**

> find me on tumblr at [olliedollie1204!](olliedollie1204.tumblr.com)


End file.
